It’s a great time for Superman fans, with the Man of Steel soaring into movies, TV, animation and comics. To help us stay on top of it, writer Tim Beedle shares what's grabbed his attention and why in this monthly Super-Family column.
 

Let’s all be grateful that Eve Teschmacher loves her mother.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Welcome to the first Super Here For… of 2025! It’s a big year for the Man of Steel, as I’m sure all of you know, with his first live action movie in twelve years hitting screens this summer. So, with that in mind, I thought I’d do something a little different with this column in the months between now and then by revisiting all of Superman’s prior live action films. Super Here For… launched several years after our last Superman movie, so we’ve never discussed any of the Man of Steel’s big screen iterations. Not Henry Cavill, not Brandon Routh and as shocking as it may seem, not Christopher Reeve.

I’m not quite old enough to have seen Superman in theaters when it was first released. To be honest, I’m not sure when I saw it for the first time, but I know I was very young. About all I can remember from that first screening is seeing Superman fly. That’s not something you forget when you’re a young, impressionable child whose mind is still full of wonder.

I’ve seen the movie a couple of times since then, but it had been a while since the last time I’d sat down to watch it. I decided it was time to change that and was astonished by how much I’d forgotten. For starters, I’d completely forgotten that the story was written by Mario Puzo (that’s the Godfather author, for those of you who don’t know the name). I’d also forgotten how patient the movie is with its pacing. It’s over 48 minutes into the movie before Christopher Reeve shows up for the first time. And it’s nearly another twenty minutes after that—over an hour into the film—before he dons the iconic suit and takes action as Superman for the first time.

As someone whose watched a lot of films from the 1970s and 1980s, this doesn’t surprise me exactly, but it feels dramatically different from the fast-paced superhero movies of today. Honestly, despite some pretty dated visual effects, I found myself time and again wishing I was watching Superman in a theater because the movie was clearly made for that experience. The wide vista shots, on both Krypton and especially in Smallville, as well as the depth and detail of a Metropolis that feels like a more hopeful New York City all demand to be seen on the biggest screen possible. I feel like the word “epic” gets used too often these days when writing about blockbuster films and event comics. (We’re certainly guilty of it here on DC.com.) But Superman truly does feel like an epic. From start to finish, it takes you on a universe-spanning journey that includes every important location in Superman’s life.

In fact, I’d say probably the biggest surprise in watching Superman today is how largely unsurprising it is. Earlier superhero movies and TV shows weren’t known for their fidelity to the source material—as great as Tim Burton’s Batman movies are, they’re his vision and not anything you’d really seen in comics prior to then. But Superman is full of elements and characters from Kal-El’s world. There’s General Zod getting sent to the Phantom Zone! There’s Lana Lang, clearly crushing hard on Clark Kent! There’s the Fortress of Solitude, kryptonite and the Daily Planet! True, there are new elements as well. Lex Luthor’s two assistants, the aforementioned Miss Teschmacher and the bumbling Otis, were both created for the film. But they’ve since been incorporated into the comics, so watching with 2025 eyes, they feel perfectly at home there.

Of course, we can’t talk about 1978’s Superman without mentioning Reeve. Any critic who dismisses all superhero movies as lightweight fluff needs to sit down and rewatch Superman right now because Reeve’s performance is nothing short of masterful. It’s not even that he’s a natural Superman, although he certainly is. It’s his complete transformation as Clark Kent. For an athletic, good looking 6’4” actor to be so thoroughly believable as the klutzy, awkward Daily Planet reporter is no small feat, but Reeve pulls it off time and again, making his Clark every bit as engaging and likable onscreen as his Superman. Also, his charisma with Margot Kidder as Lois Lane, both as Superman and as Clark, is undeniable. These two light up the screen together.

Now, not everything has aged well, of course. As I mentioned, the special effects are laughable by today’s standards and don’t even get me started on Lois’s weird “Can You Read My Mind” poem/song thing. I also don’t think you’d ever see a villain like Gene Hackman’s Lex Luthor—who self-identifies as the “world’s greatest criminal mind” and is largely evil just for the sake of being evil—in a superhero movie today unless it was explicitly aimed at young children.

And then there’s the ending. We’ve become so accustomed to seeing some sort of climactic fight at the end of superhero movies that it’s astonishing to realize that Superman doesn’t have one. In fairness, the franchise would soon get there with Superman II, but here, the big third act is simply Superman saving the world from Luthor’s errant missiles. True, he does this by stopping earthquakes and massive floods and flying quickly around the earth to literally turn back time at one point, but it all still feels a little anticlimactic. Superman isn’t even able to save himself from Lex Luthor’s kryptonite. It takes a change of heart by Miss Teschmacher, along with Luthor making the fatal mistake of targeting Hackensack, where Eve’s mother lives.

At first, I might have said the ending doesn’t hold up, but I soon realized that this is actually the perfect ending for a Superman movie—or at least as perfect of one as they were capable of in 1978. After all, in this final sequence, Superman’s saving lives. That’s always been what he’s about. He exists to help and save the innocent people of Metropolis and the world. At times, this may involve fighting villains, but that’s only if there’s no other way to save the people at risk. The big super-powered battles are and should be secondary, and the fact that there isn’t one here is actually a pretty strong reminder of that.

There are Superman fans out there who feel like Richard Donner’s film is the perfect Superman movie, and that there’s almost no point in making further films since they’ll always be inferior to it. I wouldn’t go that far. Yes, Reeve is a defining Man of Steel—one who will always be associated with the character by anyone who has seen any of his four Superman movies. And yes, 1978’s Superman is truly the first superhero blockbuster. Everything from Burton’s Batman to the Marvel successes of today likely wouldn’t exist if Reeve had never put on the cape. Superman taught us that a man could fly, and millions of fans the world over believed it. Personally, I’m in no hurry to come back down to earth.
 

Tim Beedle covers movies, TV and comics for DC.com, writes our monthly Superman column, "Super Here For...", and is a regular contributor to the Couch Club, our recurring television column. Follow him on Bluesky at @TimBeedle and on Instagram at @notabard.

NOTE: The views and opinions expressed in this feature are solely those of Tim Beedle and do not necessarily reflect those of DC or Warner Bros. Discovery, nor should they be read as confirmation or denial of future DC plans.